Here’s one thing that you do not need to worry about as a brand-new entrepreneur who is struggling to find their first few clients: Leverage.
Leverage in business is a lovely concept. Leverage means we invest less of our time, and still manage to reach more people, change more lives. Leverage in business means we create “scalable” systems … you can enroll an unlimited number of customers or clients without investing more resources. Leverage means we invest our time in creating a service or product (such as a teleclass series or an e-course) once, and then selling the content over and over again. Leverage means we repurpose what we do today, so that it serves us in the future. Automation is a big part of creating leverage. Leverage in our business can sometimes mean making money while we sleep. That’s the big draw of the Internet marketing world, right?
Leverage has become the big buzz-word … and why not? It’s a great concept. Who wouldn’t want to do more with less? Who wouldn’t want to build a business without investing more time and energy?
But guess what?
If you just got your website up and running and you have NO clients … creating “leveraged” and “scalable” offers is really not a concern. Because you know what you have when you have very few clients – or no clients at all?
Time.
Instead of worrying about becoming “fully leveraged” in your business, I suggest you invest that time in finding some clients.
Seriously … I’ve run into at least three new entrepreneurs in the last week who are tremendously concerned about the amount of time they are investing in service delivery. They are concerned with leverage in their business … when they essentially don’t even HAVE a business yet!
Leverage definitely becomes a problem when we have a ton of private clients. I’ve been there, with a calendar so full of readings that I was ready to cry. I needed to stop working one-on-one and develop classes and products so that my calendar wasn’t so slammed. We absolutely need to create leverage before we are so busy working “in” our business that we have no time to work “on” our business.
But if you have no clients? Or just one or two?
Leverage in business is not something to worry about.
Invest your time in marketing, not creating teleclasses and products. You probably don’t have a list, so to whom would you market that six-week teleclass, anyway? Go find a few more clients and learn to enroll them with ease. Get comfortable marketing and selling. Raise your rates, bit by bit and get comfortable receiving income. When you have two-thirds of the clients you want … THEN worry about creating something more scalable, like small group programs or digital courses or group teleclasses.
Leverage is wonderful. Worry about being “leveraged” too early in your business, and you may actually hinder your financial growth, rather than accelerating it! Having paying clients is your first order of business.
To your infinite abundance,
Andrea
Tagged with: leverage in business • scalable business
Filed under: Releasing Limiting Beliefs
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Thank goodness. The voice of reason in a world of unrealistic expectations for new entrepreneurs. Its one thing to think BIG and another to entertain magical thinking, which really is another way of ‘elegantly’ holding youself back. Thanks Andrea.
Andrea!!! Too funny! Once again you speak the words that resonate so well with me… In fact, I avoided reading your blog at first because I literally rolled my eyes when I saw the title was “leverage”. I’m so sick of hearing this buzz word mostly because while I understand I need leverage to “make my millions” I never fully understood how to get there. And I’m not sure why today’s mentors tend to leave out that bit of information (although, I understand it should be considered common sense). Anyway, now I get it, thanks to your wise words almost a year ago… “one foot in front of the other!” So grateful to you!
There are many new coaches and helping professionals who really need to take this message to heart. So many “online gurus” are talking about leverage and building a business on auto-pilot that many new solo-professionals do try to skip the foundational business building that you so wisely recommend. First we must become proud merchants who feel really good about what we are selling when money changes hands. Very, very few (if any) can skip the experience of client attraction and satisfaction and go right to a business model of leverage.